TV review: The Apprentice, Edwardian Farm and Some Dogs Bite

Alex 'marketing is what I do best' Epstein's last stand ... The Apprentice Photograph: BBC/PA

The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, 15 November 2010

In the article below twins Kian and Cory Smith should have received the main billing as playing "the world's best behaved baby" in the film Some Dogs Bite on BBC3, but our television review credited Lewis Ryan Dickson as the main child. All three played the same part of the impeccably well-behaved Severino, but the twins played the substantial role.

Whisper it softly, but recent episodes of The Apprentice (BBC1) have been a wee bit rubbish. The teams have been completing their tasks with some proficiency and his lordship has been booting out the more obviously incompetent and psychotic. Somewhat late in the day – six years to be precise - it had started to look distressingly as if the show was trying to claw back some credibility by rebranding itself as a boot camp for would-be entrepreneurs, rather than sticking to the trusted format of reality show for delusional narcissists that has made it such a hit.

Thankfully, normal service was resumed last night, as the two teams were asked to create a new brand of household cleaner, and a radio and TV advert to help sell it. What followed was pure slapstick. It was as if the teams had watched several episodes of The Office under the impression it was an HR training video.

It's not easy to make advertising professionals look like intellectual heavyweights, but the apprentices achieved it effortlessly. There again – to judge by their creative endeavours – the apprentices must be the only 10 people in Britain whose only exposure to advertising has been through an Alabama TV station in the 1950s.

Alex "marketing is what I do best" Epstein project-managed Apollo and, at Chris "merchant banker" Bates's suggestion, opted to call their cleaner The Germinator. They produced an advert that featured a masked 10-year-old boy wiping influenza germs off the cooker. Even though the bottle clearly said "Keep out of reach of children" and the product was not meant to be a hospital disinfectant.

Meanwhile Chris "ladeez' man marine" Farrell was in charge of Synergy and confidently pronounced that "sex always sells". After spending five minutes with a focus group, Chris decided that what the average woman really wants to be is an octopus and after rejecting a couple of actors who could actually act, opted for a 19-year-old model who couldn't wait to star in his campaign. Alongside him, of course. The advert consisted of Chris winking (yes, winking) on the sofa, thereby suggesting that if the model put on an octopus suit and got on with the cleaning sharpish, she'd be in with a chance of a quick bunk-up.

It was a toss-up as to which team lost. I'd have nominated Synergy for creating such a witless piece of sexism, but his lordship saw it differently, largely on the grounds that Apollo had chosen a red rather than a yellow bottle. So Synergy went off to a karaoke night to sing We are the Champions with no apparent irony, while Alex got fired. He will be no great loss to Apollo, though a significant one to the show.

For those going though withdrawal symptoms from Downton Abbey, there was some TV methadone on offer with Edwardian Farm (BBC2), a new series that claims to be part reality show, part important historical programming, but is really just another costume drama in disguise. It has the same cast of historians – Alex Langlands, Peter Ginn and Ruth Goodman – who appeared in Victorian Farm and Victorian Pharmacy reprising their act with assorted locals in period dress.

Some parts were genuinely interesting: at one point, Peter climbed onto the roof, produced a live chicken from under his coat, and announced that the Edwardians used to sling them down the chimney to clear away the soot. Fortunately for the chicken, Peter used some holly sprigs instead; unfortunately for the chicken, Peter slung the chicken off the roof. We didn't get to see where it landed.

The only flaw with the programme – and I fear it may be fatal – is that once you've got the animals in the fields and the crops in the ground, this Edwardian farm begins to look pretty much like any other farm, and expecting viewers to hang in for 12 episodes is overdoing it rather. I'm not sure I will.

For a genuine dose of reality, you were far better off with the drama Some Dogs Bite (BBC3). Coming from the same team that made Dustbin Baby, this was the story of H, Casey and baby Sevvy's road-trip struggle to stay one step ahead of the police and social services after their mother's death. At times it wore its social realist didacticism a little heavy, but the central performances of Thomas Sangster and Aaron Taylor more than compensated. Most mesmerising of all, though, was Lewis Ryan Dickinson as the world's best behaved baby.